Mary

Mary and her son were doing everything right. Mary had secured a new, full-time position at a hospital and her son was preparing for college.

Mary expected an increase of rent for the public housing apartment. She paid an extra $100 dollars towards rent the month she started her new job, expecting any excess amount to go towards the adjustment.

Shortly thereafter, Mary received a 14-day eviction notice for unpaid rent. Mary was shocked; not only because she had never missed a payment, but also because the balance claiming to be owed was for over $10,000 dollars. On top of that, the alleged outstanding balance was from a period of 2 years prior. Until the eviction notice, Mary’s account statements had always stated she was in good standing.

Convinced that she would be evicted due to an error and lose the stability her son needed as he prepared for college, Mary came to Open Door Legal for help.

Attorney Cathy took Mary’s case and soon discovered that Mary was also facing serious habitability issues that were repeatedly reported and never addressed. Leaks in the roof, shower, and toilet had collectively caused rot and severe mold issues, with mold present all over the walls throughout the apartment. Upstairs leakages seeped into her kitchen ceiling while asbestos came out of the walls. Faulty kitchen plumbing had also forced Mary to keep pots and pans under the sink to catch excess water. In addition, Mary and her son had been dealing with a severe rodent infestation. Rodents infested the crawl spaces under the housing complex and the infestation was so rampant that it became impossible to eradicate with traps.

On March 19th, 2015, Mary and her attorney attended an Informal Grievance Hearing. Mary presented extensive testimony to each habitability issue, as well as chronological documentation of account statements that repeatedly stated she did not owe a past balance on her rent. Also presented was Mary’s entire work order history that proved her requests for repair were ignored or neglected for long periods of time, and that many repair requests were never resolved.

On April 30th, 2015, the hearing officer ruled in Mary’s favor. It was determined that Mary did not owe an outstanding balance and that the habitability of her apartment required abatement of rent. Rent credit and immediate repairs were ordered and Mary’s eviction notice was overturned.

“I never expected anything would come out of this, that I would actually win,” Mary told us, “Cathy was really good.”

Mary is relieved by the outcome and not having to worry about an unfair eviction appearing on her credit history. She’s now focusing on looking for a new home and helping her son prepare for college. During a recent visit with Mary, she shared that her son worked a paid leadership program over the summer teaching eighth graders, and just returned from a college campus tour. “I am very proud of him,” Mary said.

Philip Green

Belinda Liu

Sil Liapis

Elder Law Attorney

(415) 610-5991
sil@opendoorlegal.org

Hannah Wischnia

Engagement Associate

(415) 906-0578
hannah@opendoorlegal.org

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Our Story

Our organization started when we realized that it was in fact possible to ensure universal access to civil representation for everyone. For years, we had watched existing legal aid nonprofits turn away more people than they helped. We had seen the government grossly underfund legal aid and attach ever-more restrictions on who could be helped. We had witnessed the private sector invest atrociously little of its accumulated wealth into legal aid.

The result of this is predictable: legal aid has become the least resourced social need in the United States. Most low and moderate-income Americans can’t get help, and as a result can’t properly enforce their rights.

We realized that by combining program innovations, new strategies for generating earned income, and a focus on fundraising from the general public we could create a system that solved this massive problem and guaranteed access to legal representation for everyone in a community, on every issue.

We decided to prototype this system in Bayview/Hunters Point because it was the only high-need neighborhood of San Francisco without a legal aid office in the neighborhood. In late 2012 we raised about $8,000 in seed funding from some generous private donors and decided to put our theories to the test.

We opened our doors on January 7th, 2013. In our first year, our core staff worked tirelessly on minimum wage to deliver services to dozens of clients. The heating in the office didn’t work, the furniture was rotten, and we couldn’t afford a receptionist. We had to scrounge office supplies and equipment from people we knew.

But we proved that our model could work. We never turned away someone for services who lived in the local community, and by rigorously tracking our outcomes we were able to get more and more support from people that hadn’t funded legal aid before. We tripled our budget between our first and second year and tripled it again in our third year.

We’ve come a long way since the days when we had to hand shred everything because we couldn’t afford a shredder. We’re excited by what the future can bring and look forward to growing our model out to encompass more and more people.

Our Board of Directors

We are proud to have a diverse board featuring local residents and professionals from a variety of different industries. The board is in charge of implementing the member-approved annual budget and overseeing our staff.